New PNG women's group says people inured to violence

The founder of a women's group in Papua New Guinea says violence has become so entrenched in the country that people will just stand by and watch when it's being carried out.

The group Women Arise was formed two months ago following a number of sorcery related killings and cases of rape.

The founder Esther Igo says since then there has been a spate of cases of violence against women and the group realised that there wasn't a consolidated approach to addressing the issue.

She says they brought together a number of stakeholders and NGOs recently and decided to hold public protests throughout the country in two week's time in response to an upsurge of violence.

"It's unprecedented so we decided we needed to take a stand and have a dramatic show of consolidation and coming together and call the government to condemn this because with all that has happened we have not heard our prime minister come up and publicly condemn the actions of the perpetrators."

Esther Igo says while they want to see perpetrators caught and harsher penalties enforced, they don't support government moves to enforce the death penalty.